Intellectual: Labour's new buzzword
Sadly, unlike Bush, Muscat is not a synonym for lady-garden, so knickers that say 'Vote Muscat' across the front lose some of their meaning.
Golly gumdrops! The Labour Party has a class problem on its hands. How does it make something which poses as a working-class party attractive to those who are not working-class? Grudges, axes to grind, bitterness and boredom might not be enough. Policies are too difficult and time-consuming.
That’s it: by the time-honoured method of portraying as ‘intellectual’ any puliti who back Labour, support the workers’ movement or espouse socialism. So Marisa Micallef is now Rosa Luxemburg, described by Kenneth Zammit Tabona – who shares her sentiments and so feels driven to justify them – as “too intellectual and intelligent to be an opportunist”.
Funny, but all the opportunists I have met have been intelligent, with the exception of Joseph Muscat, who is merely crafty and manipulative. It takes a certain amount of intelligence, after all, to spot opportunities for self-advancement and exploit them – though it takes a lot more intelligence than that to consider the long view, the wider implications and the potential consequences, and to factor them in. Those who are extremely intelligent are rarely opportunists.
When Labour’s intellectualism was of the patronising ‘I have read books and you haven’t’ kind avidly promoted by Alfred Sant and Mario Vella as a way of denigrating unintellectual bourgeois persons like myself, it was pretty much useless to their cause though it might have helped them feel better about themselves. People didn’t flock to vote Labour because Alfred Sant and Mario Vella think of themselves as intellectuals.
Ah, but what if you persuade people who are not working-class that by showing public support for Labour they are demonstrating themselves to be intellectual and intelligent?
Joseph Muscat: “Tajba din, Toni. Naghmluha!”
Anglu Farrugia: “X’ iz-z*bb ifisser ‘intellectual’?”
Toni Abela: “Jigifieri meta ma tkunx mill-klassi tal-haddiema u tivvota Labour, turi kemm ghandek mohhok superjuri u kemm taf tahseb.”
Intellectualism is the new Labour buzzword for what crass and ordinary folk like myself would call by other names, like flakiness. It has also been hit upon as a brilliant explanation for why Joseph Muscat and his crack team of yesterday’s men need not explain why they were vehemently against EU membership six short years ago and against joining the Eurozone just 19 very brief months ago.
Here’s one of Labour’s most prolific internet elves on timesofmalta.com:
laurence schembri
It`s all water under the bridge, life goes on and changes have to be positively and gainfully made, changing one`s policies is not a crime, but an intellectual attitude.
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Tajjeb mela jien intelletwali, ghax gej mill-klassi tal-haddiema u qatt ma vvutajt Labour (u lanqas ha nivvota).
Le, hekk tigi blue-eyed boy.
The peak of intellectualism is throwing a tantrum “because I want a modern art museum” and demanding a large roofed theatre (“even Haiti and Papua New Guinea have one and we don’t, boohoo”) .
Reminds me of “E’ una battaglia di cultura!” uttered so often by that other intellectual with walking stick and jackboots.
Of all the things you can write about, Daphne, you opt for this crap? God we are really in crisis nowadays.
[Daphne – I may not hold those people in high regard, but please, I draw the line at calling them crap. Also, unlike Kenneth, Marisa and Joseph Muscat, I’m not an intellectual, so don’t come here looking for intelligent insights into situations. I’m an entertainer, not Rosa ‘show me your money’ Luxemburg.]
ejja ha naqraw ftit illejla Doris ghax ahna partit tal-intellettwali
http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/sni/lowres/snin21l.jpg
Some quotes:
I could never think well of a man’s intellectual or moral character, if he was habitually unfaithful to his appointments.
– Nathaniel Emmons
An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 – 1969)
In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or exist in extreme boredom… Make no mistake, all intellectuals are deviants in the U.S.
– William S. Burroughs (1914 – 1997), Yage Letters
Intellectuals are the most intolerant of all people.
– Paul Duncun
One can call it “intelligence” or “intellectual attitude” but to me it’s plain cunning.
Look on the bright side, Daph: at least this time they’re using the “double l” correctly, and we’re spared all those ‘intollerants’.
“Joseph Muscat gab l-iskart ta’ haddiehor…”: here’s Tarka Laburista, the anonymous blog on it-torca.com
http://it-torca.blogspot.com/2009/09/fl-ahhar-faqqat.html